One cigarette pack of the art is the so called hard-pack, which is essentially a pack with a hinged lid, where the cigarettes are positioned in the pack transverse to the axis of the hinge. A further known cigarette pack is the so called soft-pack, which is a pack with no lid, where the axis of the cigarettes is positioned in the pack parallel to the major axis of the pack. These cigarettes are typically wrapped in a metal, metal laminate or metallic coated paper, normally termed as a foil, which is sealed around the “charge” of cigarettes.
When the top is opened by rotation about the hinge line (for hard-pack types) or by removal of a wrapper (for soft-pack types), the user sees the circular ends of the array of cigarettes. Each cigarette is removed from the pack by withdrawal along its axis, parallel to the major axis of the cigarette pack.
An alternative arrangement is the “slide and shell” cigarette packs, in which one or more groups of cigarettes wrapped in foil are contained in a tray-like slide received in a rectangular sleeve.
In the arrangement of the present invention, cigarettes are positioned with their axes parallel to the axis of a hinge of a lid of the pack. A cigarette pack with cigarettes held in a pack parallel to a hinge axis between its halves and which when opened exposes the interior of both halves to the user, is disclosed in DE-A-3345586, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,342 also discloses a package for cigarettes, the contents of this US patent being incorporated herein by reference. The pack of U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,342 has a similar action to the conventional hard-pack type with the axes of the hinge parallel to the axis of the cigarettes enclosed within. These types of cigarette packs allow the user to draw out the cigarettes more easily.
Current cigarette packaging machines pack cigarettes into conventional cigarette packages that open from the top. The “Shell-and-Slide” packer bundles cigarettes into a tray-like slide, and slides this into a rectangular sleeve.
Current side-opening cigarettes broadly fall into two categories.                (i) Sliding of an inner sleeve laterally out from the outer sleeve pocket; pivotal motion where the inner sleeve pivots on the outer sleeve to allow the inner sleeve to be tipped out; and        (ii) side hinge motion, where the package is opened by the side, much like a book.        
While these types of packages may be broadly termed as side opening packages, the cigarettes are not drawn out from the side, but rather, from the major axis of the cigarette packs.
The prior art does not disclose cigarette-packaging machine, or other automated method, which packs cigarettes into packages that allow the user to draw out the cigarettes from the side. Packaging into such packages is presently done manually. Manual packaging processes are time-consuming and labour intensive, and this will ultimately affect production, turnaround time and the economic viability of this form of cigarette packaging. Also, due to the mundane nature, the packaging process will also be prone to human error in that the number of cigarettes packed into each package may differ. This will ultimately affect the quality of the process, and deter conformance to international quality standards. To comply with these standards, an additional step or additional means to determine the number of cigarette sticks in each package may need to be introduced.
Where manual handling is concerned, human contamination may be introduced within the cigarette packs, which may also pose a health risk.
With the delicate nature of the cigarette sticks, damage to the sticks may also occur, including defect rates and wastage. This may once again be a quality concern to the cigarette packaging process.
It follows that there is a need for an efficient packaging system to minimise the production time, health and quality problems that the present packaging process provides.